Michael Parkinson in 2005. Photo: Shutterstock
On any Saturday night in the seventies and eighties, there was one man for whom the nation would turn on its televisions in search of entertainment, lighting, gossip and fun.
With his Beatle hairdo, wide-collared shirts , veal ties — and sometimes in the spirit of the day, medallion — Michael Parkinson, whose show about Parkinson ran from 1971 to 1982, was a nonpareil talk show host — a master of the format that he single-handedly defined on British television, and to which no one his followers could never properly imitate.
Before Parkinson in the 1960s, the pre-eminent television interviewer was John Freeman, who, on his program Face to Face, adopted the ruthless forensic approach that had once brought famed short-tempered broadcaster Gilbert Harding to tears.
After Parkinson came as Russell Harty, Jonathan Ross and most recently Graham Norton. But as brilliant as Norton is, his program is far from a talk show in the traditional sense — it's a show, a gathering of guests twisting jokes without any danger.
Parkinson was a journalist before he became a broadcaster, and he had a special ability to calm his guests, ask the right questions and get candid answers — even if his manner could sometimes border on subservience, especially when he entertained aging Hollywood stars and personal heroes such like Betty Davis, Gene Kelly and John Wayne.
When Orson Welles appeared on his show, Parkinson told him that he would call him «Mr. Welles out of respect for his great talent». Wells countered, «I'd say you're talking nonsense.» Since then, Parkinson has referred to him as Orson.
«Gentleness» is a criticism that has sometimes been directed at Parkinson (and especially hurtful). But its guests also include figures as varied and complex as Harold Wilson, Jonathan Miller, Jacob Bronowski, writer and host of the documentary series The Rise of Man, offering a perspective of depth, understanding, at times disagreement and even controversy. His exchanges with Muhammad Ali on the subject of Ali's views on racial division made headlines.
It would be more difficult for him with women. His 1975 interview with a young Helen Mirren spoke in excruciatingly embarrassing detail about Mirren's appearance and appearances nude in films, with Parkinson asking if her «equipment» had undermined her «equipment» as «a serious actress in quotation marks «. «Serious actresses can't have big breasts, is that what you mean?» Mirren replied visibly annoyed. Years later, she described Parkinson as «a goddamn sexist old fart.» Photo: Getty
«I could flirt outrageously with the people who came to the show and it was all part of the fun,» Parkinson told me when I interviewed him in 2020, adding, «Now you're more limited.» . The tone was visibly regretful.
It was a terrifying experience interviewing senior television interviewers. For all his affable and condescending TV persona, Parkinson could be a notoriously short-tempered and blunt man, typifying a trait also evident in fellow Yorkshiremen — and friends — Brian Clough, Jeff Boycott and Dickie Bird, who told the Telegraph he told Parkinson shortly before his death. (“We shed a few tears and I said keep going, buddy,” he said. “Those were my last words to him: ‘Keep on, keep fighting,’ and I’ll call you again. That’s it.”)
Indeed, in his newspaper columns, Parkinson often leaned towards playing the part of a professional Yorkshireman, talking about his humble origins as a miner's son, his love for the Barnsley Football Club and its legendary «hardman», a miner named Skinner. Normanton, and his constant regret that he never played for the Yorkshire cricket team, was all written for a hefty fee from his pleasant home in Berkshire.
Michael Parkinson with George Best. Photo: BBC
Ironically, for a man who was himself a journalist, he could be especially blunt with someone assigned to interview him. (He would have been a difficult guest on his own show.) A few years before I met him in person, I had been on the phone with him, trying to find a quote for a story. His annoyance when receiving a call is “who gave you my number?” — it was palpable, and two minutes later he shot me.
But in his old age, white-haired and frail, he was a much more good-natured, kind figure, although prone to outbursts of irritation. I came across an interview he gave to the men's magazine Club in 1971, when he was 36 and just starting his TV show, in which he gave a gripping glimpse of the driven young Parkinson. «I'm not in this business to have my name engraved on a tombstone as a very good TV presenter,» he told a reporter. “I'm here for the money, and the way to make money in TV is to put on your own show.”
Big bread? Parkinson winced when I read it back to him. “Jargon of the time…” he said stiffly.
He came across as rather… cheeky, I guessed. He winced at the word. “Frankly ambitious might have been the best way to put it. I was determined to succeed and change my life and the lives of those around me. I had no idea where I was going — I had no idea. I was a different person then.»
Michael Parkinson with his wife Mary and children, 1983. Photo: TV Times
When we met, he had just published Like Father, Like Son, co-authored with the youngest of his three sons, Mike. In the book, he told an anecdote that in 2019 he appeared on Piers Morgan's TV show Life Stories. family home in a body bag, «like a package».
Parkinson wrote that he was never known as a relationship consultant—there was little demand for them in the Yorkshire mining village of Cudworth where he grew up, «or even in Yorkshire». He also wrote that he was not «very adept or comfortable in the sensitive side of life.» Crying in public on a national TV show was a «definitely no-no» and it was never his ambition as an interviewer to bring out what he sardonically called the «Holy Grail of celebrity sobbing.»
He told me that in his years as a talk show host, interviewing over 2,000 of the most famous people in the world, he could only remember one occasion when a guest was brought to tears — comedian Bob Monkhouse, talking about his son Gary, who had cerebral palsy. «If I ever got to the point where someone broke down and cried,» he said, «I would be very ashamed of them.»
So there was no one more stunned than Parkinson, who, remembering the death of his father on the Morgan show, should have burst into tears himself. “It surprised me,” he told me. “Because I knew what he [Morgan] was up to, and being old for the game, I prepared for it. What amazed me and still fascinates me is that after so many years after the death of my father, there is still something lurking in me, like some kind of disease that has broken out — and I don’t know where. p>< p>The theme of the family was especially difficult and emotional for Parkinson. His mother was an influential, sometimes domineering figure, and it was to his father that he turned for love. In the book, Mike wrote that for most of his childhood, Parkinson was a figure who caused «anxiety and anxiety» and appeared only at mealtimes, making «dictations and less-than-flattering remarks about hair length, school performance, and athletic prowess.» creating a tense and unpleasant atmosphere in the house. “He did not terrorize me. I just found it unassailable and distant.»
'more mellow' Michael Parkinson in 2019. Photo: Christopher Pledger
When I asked Parkinson if he was aware of the misfortune he had caused his family, he replied that he was «too drunk to realize it,» plunged into a period of unhappiness and instability, which, in retrospect, he attributed to the death of his friend. father.
Did my father ever say, I asked, that he loved him? He shot me a look, a question from an effeminate southerner. “Not in those terms. Not with a string quartet playing in the background. But I knew that he loved me. He didn't really need to tell me that. I never doubted it for a second.”
I asked Mike the same question. He answered “No,” but added that Parkinson got bigger later in life… Parkinson interrupted his son with a laugh. «Amorous…» «Much more comfortable in his ability to express his emotions… He's become a lot softer.»
Parkinson told me he beat his drinking by moving to Australia — «Yorkshire in the sun,» as he put it , and building the second chapter of his career. He later returned to the UK, appearing on a talk show for ITV that never had the impact of the original Michael Parkinson. The time of the show he opened is over. There will never be another Parka and never will be.
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